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"So Thomas had also stayed there! This already constituted something of a bond between us. Now he settled down in Anacapri where he discovered a house, with a large room as studio, on the inclined district which slopes westward. In this room, drinking and smoking constant napoletano cigars, we would spend fruitful hours on certain days when his servant and model Antonio was not fit for posing as 'Lycidas'. It was I who chose the name for that statue, Thomas having asked me to root out a well-sounding and classical one which, however, was to convey no definite suggestion; he wanted something vague and yet distinguished. I hit upon Lycidas because it belonged to three or four persons in antiquity, none of any great importance."

@daniel: one glaring problem with thiblo occurs to me: there's (afaict) no way to jump from note to note. i tend to read the article first here, then go have a look at the thiblo version. it's impossible as a practical matter to read the same text at the same level of attention twice over, especially in quick succession, so i can't just reread it, reading notes as i go--i have to scan for the note markers. while their unobtrusiveness is great when you're reading the article, it's annoying when you're actually looking for them.

i'd like to see "prev note"/"next note" links in the note boxes to help navigate (with appropriate slop in the scrolling so you can see the text being annotated, of course.

I kept thinking here of Milton (the great cause-maker for progressivism under Cromwell) and wondering how good old John would react to your blog (apart from enjoying your diction thoroughly), especially when considering different stages in his life.

I'm speculating here (as I said above) but you can't say "Lycidas" and not mean Milton. . .

John Milton had a good buddy named Eddie King who shipwrecked when Johnny was 29. He wrote the poem as an elegy, giving Eddie the ol' epic name "Lycidas." The poem itself is a monster of a work, dense and difficult (though certainly intriguing).

Anyway, Milton, apart from being a 1337 h4rdc0r3z p0e7, was a rabble rouser and hawk for the Revolution (that would be the Puritan Revolution) -- which, of course, Mencius would be again'.

He was arrested a few times as the course of the revolution/restoration resolved itself, but he was pretty unstoppable as a political and literary force.

Johnny Abacus: Yes, we are still aiming at bringing about a "Truth system" very much in line with MM's ideas.

A few months ago we painted ourselves a bit into a corner by focusing too much on code and features, neglecting the problems of deployment and live updates, which means that we could not easily deploy minor fixes and small features on a live system without long downtime and a lot of coordinated work by several people. Many of the bugs reported by MM readers have already been fixed, but we are now working on seamless and effortless upgrades and a loosely coupled test environment, where we can test release candidates before unleashing them on the unsuspecting public. :-)

Meanwhile, we keep mirroring UR (with explicit authorization by MM) and looking at how people use it. We have already learned much from it and the next deployed version will be much better and richer, comprising the results of several months' worth of intensive work.

In the Bible, Behemoth is supposed to do fight Leviathan at the end of the world, after which they will both be slain by Jehovah. In Hobbesian allegory, Leviathan is ideal monarchy while Behemoth is parliamentary chaos. It's clear which of the two Mencius favors, though the faithful would say they will both perish in the end to bring forth a paradise.

But Mencius tells us that the bull's master (Lycidias = Jehovah) is dead. The people try to chain and restrict him, yet they fail. These might be the neocalvinist/progressives of Mencius's ire, trying to do the work of God, immanentize the eschaton and bring forth an earthly paradise. It's impossible to reconcile divided power with orderly government, absent a miracle.

The account of the bull's breaking his chain, and re-chaining with high-tech material, comes out of an entirely different mythos. This is the wolf Fenrir of the Edda, who will break loose at the end of the world and fight Odin at Ragnarok, to their mutual destruction. Odin is the chief god, with no higher power to set things right if he fails. There is no paradise at the end but only destruction and rebirth of the old universe.

The bull will finally break free once again. The delusional Puritan republic will fall, and eventually civilization will rise again from the chaos.

i may as well also point out the handoff of the conspiracy from england to america implicit from moving from cromwell to columbus. (and perhaps the redwood reflects its contemporary headquarters on the west coast? :)

According to "Enlightenment" thinking in the metaphor, government was a "Minotaur", a monster when in the service of kings, but if only bright people like themselves were calling the shots, they could "tame the Minotaur" and use its strength for good.

...The fruit of foes, by fraud of friends,He may peruse that lust,How firm is fraud, how frail is faith,How ticklish now is trust,How as from Hydra's head intrudes,The plumes of peevish pride,And how with double-faced wrong,Time's truth is slowly tried....And everything do clean decline,Without restrain of might.Abandoned are all civil means,Of policy and right.In this deformed change each craft,By painful hands sustain'd,Who reapt his fruit by labour sweet,Is now no more maintain'd.The herdsman doth (dismayed man)Refuse his simple charge,The advocate hath now no means,To wrest his law at large.The steersman leaves his floating bark,To drench in seas alone,The traffic of the spending hand,Is now reject and gone....Mute is the mouth that would control,That Error now suborns,Their blind and brutish appetites,No Justice now reforms.To foul and vile licentious vice,Now liberty permits,Disorder and deformed will,In open judgment sits.Now each man prowls for private gain,With greedy lust he wrings,The massy gains of golden sums,That such disorder brings.In this black time the stars do war,The heavens frown at this,To see this Chaos upon earth,Where form and faction is.

The first part quoted reminds us of the economic crash - especially the particularly fine "the traffic of the spending hand/is now reject and gone." The verses beginning with "Mute is the mouth..." seem with uncanny perception to describe the first month of the Obama administration and the present session of Congress.

In fact I extracted them from Pierre Ronsard's 'Discours des misères de ce temps,' as Englished by Thomas Jeney and published anonymously in Antwerp, probably by Wechel or Plantin, in 1568. I have modernized the spelling, which in the original was a difficult combination of Elizabethan orthography and Flemish typesetting.

Ronsard, like Hobbes and MM, recommends the exercise of absolute authority as the remedy for all these miseries:

The Royal pride of haughty seat,The pomp of princely law,That quiet held the mace of might,And regal sword of awe,In bosom of the heavenly light,What may their souls now say?Yea what may they that shrouded areIn couch and tomb of clay?What may the Royal PHARAMOND,And CLODIUS insign?What may proud CHARLES, king PIPPIN eke,And LEWIS of that time?What may CLOVIS in Armour clad,And Martial MARTEL say?That first with prudent policy,Did reign and rule alway....

Look to your proud estate, you GAULS,You GAULS of ancient name,That never stain'd with overthrow,You might conserve your fame,In quiet form, as heretofore,Your fathers in their time,Who long maintained a quiet reign,From all unshamefaced crime:From headlong broils, from civil wounds,From such defamed war,That in this age (unhappy time)We see apparent are.Of happy and of quiet life,We see the glass run out,The wreck appears from cloudy sky,Now, MADAME,* look about:Make clear a board, in stormy seas,The master shows his skill,Reform these frantic brains that thus,Do run on headlong will.Restrain with steady reins these men,That with unbridled head,Haste to the stage of fiery arms,Their native blood to shed.Respect the hazard of our state,Respect our present Reign,Appease this quarrel and debate,That mangles thus our fame.Redress our vile dismembered age,Of most deformed life,Seek how to reconcile these wars,Of vile and hateful strife....Our plaintful state in throes of woe,In hazard of decay,Calls help of none but thee (thou QUEEN)That beareth now the sway...

*The poem was dedicated to Catherine de Medici, queen mother and regent of France in the minority of her son Charles IX.

I interpreted the bull to be the maturity transforming banking system. It periodically goes haywire, despite quite literally dictionary-length bodies of law intended to prevent it from doing just that. Once the dust settles, everyone decides that it was obviously under regulated, attaches to it more regulation and figures that all is well until it goes on another rampage.

If we begin with the notion that the Lycidas in question is Milton's - which is not at all certain to me - then we must bear the following in mind (as well as that it is easily possible to go quite wrong in interpreting an allegory).

Milton's Lycidas belongs to the genre of the pastoral. It was quite popular at the time the poem was written. Compare ll. 132-141 of "Lycidas":

All the same stock expressions about whispering winds, flowers, waters, and valleys low!

Both pieces are descendants of the Renaissance revival of classical forms that began in the time of Petrarch. The specific references, e.g., to "Alpheus," in Milton's case, and to "Fillide e Clori" in Rinuccini's, place them in the mythical Arcadia of Theocritus's Idylls and Vergil's Bucolics. Lycidas, indeed, was the name of a shepherd in the seventh Idyll of Theocritus and one of the speakers in Vergil's ninth Eclogue. The "Sicilian muse" of l. 133 alludes to the opening lines of Eclogue VI:

alludes to the Damoetas who gave the shepherd Corydon of Eclogue II a pipe of seven hemlock-stalks, and who is one of the dramatis personae of Eclogue III.

Thus, "Lycidas" was composed with a knowledge of Vergil, and probably of Theocritus. Certainly Latin and Greek literature would have been well known by Milton by the time he arrived at Cambridge.

Not only is "Lycidas" a pastoral, but it is a particular type of pastoral, namely an eulogy or epitaph. The circumstances have been well explained by G.M. Palmer, but the allusions have not. The specific models of pastoral epitaph that Milton had were the first Idyll of Theocritus, and the fifth Eclogue of Vergil, both of which lamented the death of a figure named Daphnis. In addition to bewailing his death, Vergil also (uniquely) described his apotheosis.

The fourth Eclogue of Vergil foretells the birth of a certain child, who will lead to a new golden age. The goats, their udders filled with milk, shall return home, and the herds fear not the lions; the miraculous child's cradle shall give forth flowers, the serpent will perish, and also the deceptive poisonous herbs, while Assyrian spices spring up on every soil:

All of this was interpreted from the middle ages forward as being a prophecy of the birth of Christ; the similarities to Biblical language about the lion lying down with the lamb, the defeat of the serpent, etc., inviting it. Because of this was Vergil placed amongst the virtuous pagans in Dante's First Circle, the limbo of the just. He was regarded as one of the prisci theologi, pagans who foresaw Christianity. The apostle Paul was said in one medieval hymn to have wept at his grave in Naples:

Because the fourth Eclogue spoke of the birth of this divine child, and the Eclogue immediately following relates to the death and deification of a young man, the latter was sometimes identified with the former, and so - in the typological manner of late medieval and early modern theology - as a "type" of Christ. Daphnis is eulogized as a sort of divine and wonder-working figure in ll. 29-34 of Eclogue V, having taught men to bring Armenian tigers under the yoke, to lead the dances of Bacchus, and entwine the tough spears in soft leaves. As vines give glory to trees, as the grape to vines, the bull to the herd, and corn to the fertile fields, so Daphnis gave glory to his people:

Of course there is no suggestion of Lycidas' deification in Milton, but rather of Christian resurrection:

"So Lycidas sunk low, but mounted high,Through the dear might of him that walked the wavesWhere other groves, and other streams along,With nectar pure his oozy locks he laves,And hears the unexpressive nuptial song,In the blest kingdoms meek of joy and love.There entertain him all the saints above,In solemn troops, and sweet societies,That sing, and singing in their glory move,And wipe the tears forever from his eyes."[ll. 172-181]

In conclusion, Milton's Lycidas, like the Daphnis of Theocritus and of Vergil, is bewailed, and like Vergil's Daphnis, is elevated to some sort of immortal life. He is also a "type" of Christ.

No bull is owned by the Lycidas of Milton's poem, but his archetype - the Daphnis of Vergil - is credited with taming tigers, and the child of Eclogue IV with bringing about the death of the serpent. Here the dangerous animals would have been understood as symbolic of the Devil. The bull, though a domestic animal, is strong, threatening, and difficult to control. He is often a "type" of the Devil, as in Caresana's Christmas oratorio of 1674, "La caccia del toro." There Lucifer is portrayed as the bull:

To bring all these diverse threads together as they relate to MM's poem:

Lycidas was a type of Christ. Lycidas owned the bull, and the bull had not managed to kill him:

"(He missed Lycidas, the poor thing.)"

Now Lycidas is dead, and the bull cannot be controlled. His is the Kingdom of this World, and the efforts of men to restrain him on their own are futile. They cannot be redeemed in the absence of a Redeemer, cannot be saved without a Saviour. Only the coming of the Logos, the Verbum Mirificum, can subdue him, as Caresana writes:

"Se t'ha vinto una ParolaChi di te paventerà?"

But Puritans (Milton), full of moral arrogance, want to 'immanentize the eschaton' - they think they can chain the bull on their own, whether in the old world ("an oak as old as Cromwell") or in the new ("a redwood older than Columbus"), and bring about heaven on earth. Their efforts proved vain in the seventeenth century; the bull's "iron chain had sawn the oak." And despite the high-tech materials ("carbon-fiber and black titanium"), the implication is that these, too, will presently fail. The bull will break free, its scythe-like horns brandished above his black countenance, spewing volcanoes of fire from his smoking nostrils, the very portrait of dreadfulness. The Beast will go his own way with grave and terrible footfalls, and none shall cause him to turn.

MM is, needless to say, not a Christian. He does not anticpate "la Nascità del Verbo" - yet one does not have to accept these ideas in order to understand the perennial character of evil, the wretchedness of human nature, and the vanity of human wishes.

All the above speculation may well be constructed on a foundation of sand. As an illustration of this risk, someone, I think maybe Mel Bradford, once pointed out to me a passage from some lit-crit type (as I recall, from a college in New Jersey) who had written that a mule in one of Faulkner's works seved as a fertility symbol. Obviously, s/he was a city-bred Yankee who had very limited familiarity with mules! Faulkner would have had a good laugh and poured himself another tumblerfull of bourbon. So, perhaps, will MM if he reads this. But it's been fun writing it.

The bull is the state, of course. Lycidas is royalty; the monarchic system worked because the state submitted willingly to the monarch.

Once monarchism dies, problems. "We" -- the demos -- chain the bull to the oak of the Constitution. But words don't enforce themselves; eventually the state breaks free of its constitutional oak, and blunders all about destroying stuff. The presence of the Constitution makes the thing even more dangerous than it was loose: "many were torn in its twigs alone." This is where we are now.

The final two stanzas reflect MM's hopes for the future. By means of technology, we shall rechain the state, and this time to something more solid than the oak of constitutionalism, rather the redwood, which is the profit motive.

Funny that nobody in MM's poem thinks of just killing the goddam thing.

To me, Lycidas equals the rabble, whose powerful emanations outlast all attempts to control them, be they the chaotic Christian bloodletting of Cromwell (Milton’s Satan) or, it is implied, tree-huggers chained to ancient redwoods.

Given such polemic thrust, I’d be careful including Columbus in all this, elegant stand-in as he is for the effective way he’s been used as a proxy to transform white man’s burden to white man’s guilt. As any child in Gloucester knows, “Columbus” was actually the fictional name of a Portuguese spy who tricked the Spanish into claiming and colonizing only the northern half of the New World, leaving Brazil and the all-important southern Africa trade routes to the Portuguese.